Archive 17 - 7/16/2017 to 7/25/2018

7/25/2018 - Just Bikin Mostly, CaliGirls, DHL Hat

I just noticed that the bike miles at the top of this page was still at 668 and I am actually at 801 now so I thought I better update that. I haven't really been specifically trying for any major bike mileage goals (other than my usual 1k for the season) but I seem to have done quite a few bike miles recently.

I don't really have any other "Big News" at the moment but I like to do an little updates once in a while of everyday stuff that is going on.

One other thing that was going on with us is that Corinne and Lexus went to LA! I haven't actually gotten much of an update from Corinne but here's a couple of photos that she texted us. I just combined 3 photos into one here (so you might want to expand it to see them better).

Corinne and Lexus in California!

I think that the wall art picture of my "little angel" was really creative.

This just in: After my ride today I now have the 2nd highest bike miles that I've had in July so far (801, I updated the mileages above). The most I ever had by the end of July was 965 and I doubt that I can beat that.

Also, when I was riding down this nice, rarely used commercial road in Hoffman Estates, I saw this DHL step van coming (slowly) the other way. So, since I had my DHelL hat on (to cover my "bald spot" so I wouldn't get too much sun) I gave the driver a big wave with my thumb pointing toward my hat. He gave a big wave back but I did not recognize him from the old days in captivity.

7/11/2018 - Door County Photos and Videos Done at last!

It's taken a while to update all of the Door County Photos and Videos on my bike site but I just completed the Sunset Trail video (which is the last one that I had to do) today. I also did a blog post about the updates on my bike site and will do some FB posts next.

I'll try not to keep this update too "Bikey" since not everyone rides and I also have my bike site and pages for that stuff.

I think that I've gotten better at the videos since I've done a lot now and I also have a different style that I use. In the past I tried to get a lot of actual video footage of the trails (with a camcorder) and make videos that were like 10 or 15 minutes long using my own original music with the vocals removed for background tracks.

Now I only do a few videos (with my phone, no GoPro (yet)) and I include a lot more still photos, including panoramic/wide shots and I use canned background music that Adobe Premier allows you to use without copyright issues. Then I use more pan and zoom effects in Premier which gives the still photos more action and I think looks really good when panning wide shots. Some people call this the Ken Burns effect like the way he pans still photos of civil war photos and stuff in PBS shows.

So anyway, that's my video "secrets" these days. I'm not putting all this video background stuff on my bike site of course. So this exciting information is for the special visitors to this site only! How exciting and exclusive, right!

So my last video, the Peninsula State Park (PSP) Sunset Trail is about 3 1/2 minutes and the Ahnapee Trail video is about 2 minutes long. It took me most of the day yesterday and part of the day today to finish the PSP Sunset Trail Video.

It always amazes me how long it takes to put together a short 2 or 3 minute video (or song as far as that goes). But it is mostly fun and I love that when I am done I have created something artistic that did not exist before. There may be similar things out there but nothing exactly like my creation. My Creation?! It's ALIVE!!! OK, I guess I am getting carried away again, right?

One more thing about the videos. For these videos I used more layed back, atmospheric background music. The PSP Sunset Trail video is almost too Angelic but I really like harps so I'm stickin with it.

Oh yea, I almost forgot. How do you find this stuff?!? There are a number of different ways but here are the main LINKS to get you to the latest stuff:

The Bike Site Blog Post about the Door County Trails

The Trail Page for the Ahnapee Trail - Photos and links, etc.

The Trail Page for the PSP Sunset Trail - Photos and links, etc.

The Ahnapee Trail Video on YouTube

The PSP Sunset Trail Video on YouTube

The Videos look much better on a large screen, of course, if you are able to do that. I'll try to add some FB sound bytes later too.

7/5/2018 - 4th of July Boating Fun at Michigan Lake House

We had a fun 4th of July at Kurt and Robin's Lake House in Michigan yesterday. Kurt and Robin invited the entire Chapman gang up to their place for the 4th and I was actually able to make it this year.

Their house is on Lake Chapin in Berrien Springs Michigan and they have lots of boats for plenty of fun on the lake. They have a pontoon boat for crusin with lots of people (in comfort), 2 Jet Skis for some real fun on the lake and 2 kayaks.

Most of us took the pontoon boat cruise and Casey and Corinne spent a lot of time on the Jet Skis. Actually Casey might have spent too much time on it since he had a painful sunburn later in the day :-(. I didn't do the Jet Ski this year but spent quite a bit of time out on one of the kayaks. Kurt came with me on one trip then I cruised around the lake by myself later. I have always liked boating ever since I was a kid.

I did not bring my big camera (the Nikon DSLR) but I brought a water proof case for my phone. That was actually very nice to have, to protect the phone and to be able to strap it on so I would not lose it if I took a spill in the lake (but I didn't).

So I really only got a few pictures this year. I focused on the fun more than the photos this time :-). But here are a few of the pictures that I managed to take:

Our 2018 4th of July Michigan Lake House Photos

The July logo that I am using this year above (with the lily pads) is actually a photo from the Lake House the other time that I was there (July of 2012).

6/29/2018 - Bike Broke Break

Well I took a little unplanned break from bike riding this week. I went out for one of my usual rides earlier in the week and yep, my bike broke. I went to shift gears and snap! the rear shifter cable broke.

So I brought it into my Local Bike Shop (LBS) and they talked me into doing both shifter cables, the chain and the spindle (the thing with all the gears by the back wheel). I thought that my chain was in bad shape due to all the miles that I've put on and I know that that messes up the gears too so that's why I went for it.

Anyway, they said it would take 5 to 7 days. In peak riding season! Damn! But then it ended up only taking 2 days. So now I am back in the saddle again with new shifter cables, a new chain and new back gears and only a few forced no riding days.

My chain in the picture on the right will never look that clean and new again. How exciting, right?!? With the new chain and spindle the gears shift WAY better than they did before and that is very noticable so at least it was better than just getting it back working again like before.

Shoot, I should have just posted this on my bike site since this is totally bike stuff. Oh well, maybe I'll post it over there later too.

6/23/2018 - Too Much Goin on!, Freedom Ride, Block of Bike Miles

I have just had too much going on lately. After my Door County trip, They started the work on my house. I got a new roof, new gutters, new aluminum facia and soffets. And for about a week they started at 7:00am which meant I got up at 7:00am! That sucked. Now I also need a new metal chimney cover. Sheesh! Casey's car got hit while parked in the city again and a part of my brake housing on my van broke.

I had a nice birthday and Father's Day though. The kids got me a really nice new bike bag for my BD and a nice portable tire pump for father's day in addition to plenty of other stuff.

Also, my friend Pam sent me a new recording for my birthday that she arranged and performed called Fur Robbie which is the long version of the Beethoven smash hit Fur Elise since I was telling her how much I liked the recording that she made of that when it comes up in the shuffle on my phone but I was wanting it longer. So...

Here's Fur Robbie!

Then on Wednesday of this week Dale and I rode 5 different bike trails in and around Madison for what we called the Freedom Ride since Dale just retired and I have been retired for a little over a year. Here's the Freedom Ride photo of Dale that I made for him. We rode 28 miles on 5 trails and ate at a Jamaican place, called Jamerica, in Madison. I'll post something on my bike site on those trails eventually.

Speakin of the bike site, I have been working on the trail and photo pages for the 2 Door County trails for my bike site in my spare time in the mornings while I have my coffee. I finished the Ahnapee Trail updates and photos and am working on the Peninsula Park Trails pages and photos now. I still need to do the videos for both. I'll post an update when I finish all the stuff for both Door County trails. So many trails, so little time!

And finally, as you can see above (unless it's changed by the time you read this), I now have a Block of Bike Miles! Yep, I just cracked 500 miles today and ended up with 512 miles by the end of the day.

For the less technical people reading this, the old computers that I used to work on kept track of disk space in "blocks" of 512 bytes each (2 blocks to a kilobyte, of course!). So that's why I am calling my current bike mileage for this year a Block of Bike Miles. But everyone knew that of course anyway. Right?

6/10/2018 - Springtime in Dorko - My Door County Trip

My Facebook post from today:

Springtime in Dorko (aka Door County) - I had a nice trip to Door County, Wisconsin last week and just posted a few of the photos to our website. I liked this sunset photo (from Sunset Beach Park in Fish Creek). I don't know who the girl in the foreground is but I thought that her being there made the photo more interesting. See www.robanddara.com for more info and photos and stuff... (and included the photo).

Beyond Facebook:

As I mentioned below I headed up to Door County last Sunday after Lily's graduation party and spent 3 days up there ridin the trails and enjoying the scenery, meals and accommodations. Dale has a timeshare condo up there now and invited me up for a visit. The condo was REALLY nice and right next to this huge Recreation Center with pools, spas, a workout room, and a bunch of other stuff.

Of course, I brought my bike and camera and rode 2 really interesting trails up there and got a ton of photos and videos and stuff. We rode the Ahnapee Trail (from Sturgeon Bay to Algoma (about 30 miles)) and the Peninsula State Park Trail near Fish Creek which was very close to where we stayed.

I will be doing full bike trail articles, photos and videos of these trails for my bike site (and I'll reference these later when I get them done) but this update is really more about our trip in general. I have a few bike trail photos but it's not all about that like the bike trail articles will be.

So I had my Nikon DSLR camera for the good nature and trail photos and my phone for easy panoramic photos, for videos and even Google Spherical Street View photos (I did a few of these too). Then I had my bike GPS to map the rides for later. Yea, I guess I am pretty much a Tecno-Geek biker! (no Go Pro helmet cam at least :-))

OK, here's the photos from my trip:

My Springtime Door County Trip Photos

I also wanted to mention a few things and include a few special links. First off we had dinner on my first night at a place called Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant and it had an unusual gimmick, I guess you could say, which is that they have live goats on the roof of the restaurant (in good weather).

Of course, this is a little weird but when searching for the exact name of the restaurant I found that they also have a Live Goat cam that always shows what the goats on the roof are up to! Really strange. Anyway here is the link to the Live Goats (on the roof) cam. They are more likely to be there on nice days in the daytime.

Also here are a couple of links to a few of the 3D Spherical Google Street View pics that I took on the trip.

Street View that I did from the driveway of the condo where we stayed - The building down the hill (to the right as you look at the photo) is the Rec Center. The regular Google street view didn't show all of this so I added this one.

Street View that I did of the Peninsula State Park Trail with the lake in the background - They took out my front bike tire!!! Sometimes the Google Street View photos from a phone get a little quirky.

6/8/2018 - Lily's Graduation Photos

Last weekend we celebrated Lily's graduation in Geneva. Sorry for the delay in posting the photos but I drove to Door County the next day (that's another story for later) and I didn't get a chance to post them.

This was a fun backyard party in Geneva with a golf course directly behind the yard. They also had Portellos for the event. Yum!

I don't have a huge amount of photos but I think I captured the feel of the party and got photos of quite a few people. I was too shy to photograph everyone.

OK, enough words lets get to the photos!

Lily's Graduation Party Photos

6/1/2018 - My New Anniversary!

All of a sudden I have a New Anniversary! Yep, June 1st is my new Retirement Anniversary! I officially dropped out of the Rat Race 1 year ago! I am not going to do any goofy recap of the last year or anything since a lot of the main stuff is written below anyway.

I just wanted to acknowledge the date and say that it has been absolutely wonderful! OK, I should mention that I still have all the same life problems that I've had before, of course. But not having to be somewhere that I really didn't want to be for 40 hours a week plus all the time getting there and back is great!

I just hope that I will get quite a few more to enjoy. :-)

5/28/2018 - Ahliana's Graduation Photos

We just got back from our trip to Wisconsin to celebrate Ahliana's Graduation! We had a great visit and the graduation party, in Sparta was excellent!

There was one problem though which was that the graduation ceremony had to be cancelled due to a terrorist threat. How sad for the graduating class that these things happen. Fortunately, everyone was safe, Ahliana did graduate and had an excellent party to prove it.

I tried to include as many people as I could in the photos (and there are quite a few) but I know I was not able to get everyone.

OK, I am not going to keep rambling on. Let's just get to the photos!

Note: The last photo also has a link to a short video.

Ahliana's Graduation Party Photos

5/15/2018 -Autobiography Update

Just a quick note on one of the things I've been doing over these last few stormy, rainy days. I just updated my Autobiography. (the Robiography link button above). Mostly I have just added some more details to the Big Picture highlights that were already there. No, I didn't add all the sordid and juicy stuff (yet, but there might be some new hints about the good stuff :-)). I'm probably just gonna put the good stuff in the book when I write it :-). Of course, I may have to get famous first for anyone to be interested.

Anyway, so in addition to adding more detail to the highlights (and maybe a few new highlights), at the bottom of the page, I updated the retirement stuff and added 2 new related links (which took a little research to get together). The new links are The Places That I have Lived and Places Where I have Worked. I often forget all the details of stuff like this so now I have it written down (and online).

OK so even if no one finds this stuff interesting (I can't imagine that though :-)), this should be a good memory aid for myself for when my mind starts going! (more than it is already!)

OK, the weather finally got better again so maybe I can get some more bike miles logged - Finally!

5/12/2018 -Uh Oh, Better Call Maaco (Before and After Van)!

Yea, that old commercial line stuck with me. So here's the Maaco story. Honda had a recall on the paint job on my van. No they didn't take the old paint back but they covered new paint jobs on my year van from a certain manufacturing facility back in 2008 (before I had any paint issues).

I didn't get the van repainted at that time but in 2013 I was running out of money and needed some van repairs so we wheeled and dealed with the Honda dealer to get reimbursed for the bad paint job. Well I got a check for $3,000. Yay! Then I did something like $1,200 in maintenance repairs.

The paint on the hood of my van started to peel off and look really bad so I had a place repaint the hood (in 2013) for $767 cause that was the only part that looked bad. Recently, a lot of the roof paint also peeled off, started to rust and looked terrible.

So this is where Maaco came in. I just paid them $842 to have the roof repainted. They also touched up a few spots on the sides. The roof paint job looks really good but the other touchup spots still look bad up close but are fine from a distance. I was going to do a schlocky job on the small spots on the sides myself and I didn't pay them for that (directly anyway) so that part is OK too.

So anyway, my 2004 Odyssey looks much better again (for now) and I am hoping to get it to 300,000 miles. It has almost 200,000 now and is still doing really well.

OK, this was supposed to be a short Before and After post but got a lot longer (as usual). So here is the Honda Odyssey Before and After photos.

Honda Odyssey Before and After

5/4/2018 -May the Fourth Be With You! Arlington Park

Well I've cracked 3 digits on my bike miles for this year but am not that far for it being May already. 120 down, 880 to go. I've actually been doing other things and not being overly obsessed with bike miles so far this year (although I do still try to ride regularly).

I've got some house projects going on that are going to cost me a fortune. I need a new roof and a tear off since mine hasn't been done in well over 20 years and there are multiple layers on it now (and the shingles blow off when it's windy). Then I was going to add new gutters and aluminum facia and soffetts so I won't have to paint hardly anything anymore. Plus part of my fence blew down in the last storm so I got some estimates in the works to get that fixed.

OK, I got plenty of chores and crap going on but today we are going to Arlington Park for opening day! The tickets are FREE (< marketing rule - must be capitalized :-)) to get in but you have to sign-up for an account online with them, give them your email and street address and avoid the online traps for marketing and stuff so in the end it's not totally free.

It's always fun to go there though and I even have a little bit of a strategy this year. I have budgeted $20 for gambling (so much for a FREE day at the races). I'll post an update here with how much I have left at the end of the day. If it is > $0.00 I will feel like I won!

The Strategy Worked!

We had a great day at the track and not only did I NOT loose my entire $20 I actually ended up with $26.60 for a $6.60 profit by the end of the day! Dara had a $2.40 profit. Dale and his friend Dawn stopped by too and Dale ended the day with a profit too. Then Casey (and his friend Kyle) stopped by for the last race and beat us all. He bet $20 on 1 horse and 1 race and won $38!

So that was a lot of fun and it was better than FREE. It was a really nice day and they paid us for a fun day at the races. So next time I think I will bring $20,000. Then I should be able to make $6,600 right!? :-)

OK, that's it fer now. I gotta head down to Louisville now for the Kentucky Derby!

Later,

4/28/2018 -The $3 Master Recording Engineer, Plus Enhanced Listening Skills

Yea, that's me! I have mastered the fine art of audio recording and production (and for just $3.00)! OK, I am saying this in a joking way, but seriously, I invested $3 in a Kindle book on audio recording (mixing and mastering that Jeff recommended), spent some time reading it and trying to absorb the important parts then experimented a little and I think I can now make WAY BETTER audio recordings.

Yes, I understand that I have not really mastered the art. I'm not sure if that is actually possible anyway. I would think that you would just keep improving with experience. So I am looking forward to that. It is so nice to have time now that I am retired to be able to do these kinds of things.

So for the details, the Kindle book that I bought was called: Audio Effects, Mixing and Mastering (the link here will take you to the Amazon page for the book if anyone is interested). The book has a lot of good information on recording tools and techniques but goes a little too far into the physics of sound for me in some places.

OK, talk is cheap so below is a sample of my new $3 skill.

For an experiment, I took the last recording that I made with my new digital recording software (Age by Jim Croce) and remixed and remastered it using the fance-dancy stuff that I done just learned. Below is a link to both versions on my cover song page. This is the exact same recording and the same tracks just remixed and remastered.

You can play the old and new versions for comparison. I tried to master the recording so it would sound good on most devices but I think the difference is most noticeable with better sound systems (so use those headphones if you got em :-))

New version (version 6c) of Jim Croce's AGE on my Cover Song Page

Aside from being able to get more volume on this version I think that the individual tracks stand out more and just sound better (even my vocal!).

A really nice side benefit that I got from this process is that I believe it has Enhanced My Listening Skills. When you start to zero in on all the different dimensions of quality stereo recordings it can help you appreciate the quality of the recording as well as the recorded music itself.

What FUN! right?

4/25/2018 -More Bike Miles, Plus..., Dara's Birthday, Bike Selfies

As I expected, the weather has been warm and cold so far this month but I have been slowly racking up some more bike miles for the year. 77 miles so far for April (as of today) as you can see above. I had to figure out a new route to my main out-the-door bike trail (The trail around Paul Douglas Forest Preserve) since there are a lot of neighborhood streets being worked on right now.

I just wrote a little blog post on my bike site about the latest conditions and obstacles on that trail at this time. You can find my Bike Site Blog Post here. I will probably do a FB post, under my bike area for this later too.

In other news, we took Dara out to Lou Malnati's pizza place for her birthday. We get Lou's carry out pretty often but I can't remember eating at the restaurant (the one in Elk Grove) although I think I might have gone there a few decades ago when I worked at digital. Anyway, it was fun to go there. It was crowded and loud (but fun anyway) and we got an appetizer and salad to go with our pizzas (one thin and one thick). So even though the bill was a little high, it ended up being 2 or 3 meals for the 4 of us so still a pretty good deal!

And this just in... I did that Facebook post about the bike trail that I mentioned above and in the process I decided that I didn't like the FB profile picture that I had for my FB bike updates - which used to be a photo of a bike instead of a person (like me). So, since I don't have a lot of photos of me on my bike, or with my bike, I decided to do a new Bike Selfie.

Maybe one day I will figure out how to do a selfie while I am riding but I don't have that down just yet so the best that I could do is try one with my bike (not riding). OK so the I took the selfie here outside today using my selfie stick that I got for Christmas this year. I cropped out the selfie stick which I am actually holding in my right hand in the photo (and the I have the remote control shutter button in my other hand).

I took a batch of photos to try to get one good one and chose the one here (it was tricky lining up the selfie photos with the selfie stick). Then I remembered that I took a bike selfie in Kentucky and I liked that one better so I just ended up using that one for my FB bike site profile. Oh well it was worth a try anyway. I still liked my Cubs hat and Cubs blue shirt so I had to post this one somewhere! :-)

4/11/2018 -First Ride! and Stuff...

OK, it's been a while since I did an update here (sorry about that) but I just had to mention that I made it out for my First Ride of the Season today, as you can see by that big mileage number above.

I've been a little bit of a wimp so far this year since I got so cold on my last ride last year (in the lower 40s in December) so I waited until it was pretty warm to start this year. It was in the 60s today so that was good enough. It was great riding weather and I had a great first ride!

I've been walking almost everyday in the colder weather and will probably go back to that when it gets cold again (on and off, but that should not be too many more days now).

I have also purchased a Kindle book on Audio Recording techniques and have been learning a lot about that. I won't get into the details here but it can get complicated and there are a lot of details to be aware of. I think I'll be doing much better recordings soon!

Corinne is in New York on a business trip this week. She is learning teckie stuff and seeing the big city. What an experience for her!

Also, I am Officially Old now. I have signed up for Social Security benefits and also for Medicare. I haven't received any SS payments yet but I am supposed to get one on the 4th Wednesday of this month and it is supposed to be retroactive back to March. Then I get Medicare on June 1st.

On the more boring side of things I just got my taxes done today! OK, well I still have my accountant actually do them but I had to get all the stuff together and then review the return after he was done (56 pages this year!!!)

One cool part about that is that my taxes went way down this year and I discovered a nice benefit to not working (in addition to Not Working!!!). I don't have to pay (much) Self-Employment Tax (which is pretty much Social Security and Medicare (twice what employees pay). This drops my overall tax bill a lot. So that is a good thing.

OK, there is probably other stuff that I missed, since it's been so long between updates, but I think I'll leave it at that fer now...

Later,

3/30/2018 -Casey's DNA Results are in and I Consolidated All of Our Results

Casey's DNA Results from 23andme are back now and I have updated our DNA Results Page with his results and have posted and article on that page with a lot more information on our DNA and the comparisons of the four of us.

So see our DNA Results Page Here for the latest updates.

3/4/2018 -More of our DNA Info and a Site Map

OK I finally got all of our DNA Results (that we have back so far) uploaded to this website and I created a separate page with DNA Results and the Family Tree that I put together. This way this information will all be in one place and accessible anytime (rather than getting buried on these pages over time).

So far I have My DNA Results along with Daras and Corinnes uploaded (Casey's is not back yet). I have included all of our 23andMe.com results along with the Ancestry.com results on this page so it is all in one place. I also Re-Posted the DNA post that I did here recently and back in 2017 when we got our 1st Ancestry results so everything is in one place.

Here's the link to the new page:

Our DNA Results and Family Tree

I have also added a new post to the DNA Results page about the New 2nd Cousins that the DNA sites found for me.

I have also added a Site Map to RobandDara.com. This is one of my original websites and I have always used it for fun, experimenting, updates, etc. Recently I just realized that since I originally put this website together last century and have just made periodic updates and upgrades on the fly, but I never had a site map here before! Sheesh!

Well I have a site map now and there is a link button at the bottom of this page (and all of the other main pages that I use my template on). I hope this makes it easier to navigate this site and find some of the pages that do not have permanent link buttons on the site (like the new DNA Results page).

So here is a link to the new Site Map (also found at the bottom of the main pages on this site).

Oh yea, I also posted this on Larry and Patty's Facebook wall today. Happy 52nd Larry and Patty!

Later,

Rob

3/1/2018 - My Wisconsin Trip and Photos!, Corinnes Birthday!

The Facebook post from today

I just got back from my winter Wisconsin trip for this year. I had a great time visiting with family and friends and took a few photos (like this one) too, of course. As usual, see www.robanddara.com for the full story and the rest of the pictures.

Then I included this photo of Larry and Patty.

Beyond Facebook:

Yep, I just got back from my 2018 Winter Wisconsin trip. It was really nice seeing everyone (well almost everyone). I managed to get together with 16 people, 2 cats and 2 dogs on my short visit!

Larry told me that his old scanner (attached to his printer) broke a while ago and he couldn't scan photos. I told him that I had a spare scanner and brought it up there for them to use.

Could anyone (out there on Facebook) tell that Larry got a new scanner?!?

OK, enuf yakin, here are the rest of the photos!

My 2018 Winter Wisconsin Trip Photos

...and in other news... Today is Corinne's birthday! Happy Birthday to my wonderful daughter!

Yep, 25 years ago today Corinne decided that she could not wait any longer to experience her life and made her first appearance in the front seat of my Caravan!!! Yep that's Corinne Cara (vana) Chapman fer ya!

Here's Corinne sitting in her birth place in 2004. I found this photo but we did not keep the van seat...

2/22/2018 -I got my DNA Results from 23andme!

I finally got my 23andme DNA results today (I sent our spit in just after Christmas)! As some of you may remember Dara and I also had our DNA tested at Ancestry.com but I had done some research after that and now believe that 23andme.com might be more accurate (and has more details).

Dara also got her 23andme DNA results back too so we can both compare our 23andme results to Ancestry.com. Casey and Corinne also had 23andme tests and Corinne has hers back now too (Casey sent his in late so it will be a while before we get his).

First of all, here's a brief summary of my 23andme results: As many of you may have suspected... Yes, I am African and Jewish!!! :-) Oy, vey! OK, I am mostly Northwestern European (like 47% British and Irish) you'll need to see the photo links below for the full breakout.

The other important thing that we verified is that Corinne is my Daughter!!! :-) Daras can no longer tell me that she could be the mailman's daughter! We never told 23andme that she was related to us but they did match her up as our daughter (so they must know something!).

When I briefly compared Dara and my DNA results from 23andme and Ancestry.com, I found that mine was closer in general (although they analyze things differently) but Daras Ancestry.com results seemed way off (23andme seemed more accurate based on what she knows about her recent ancestors).

OK, I am not going to have time for a complete update tonight, but here are a few links to my DNA results from the 2 places.

My DNA Ancestry results from 23andme

My Ancestry Timeline from 23andme

My DNA results from Ancestry.com

We also had the Health Risk, Carrier status, Wellness and Traits tests done too. I have no health risk or carrier issues (just via my DNA) but some of these tests are very interesting. Like it says I am likely to have red hair (OK, check (when I was younger anyway)), It's likely that I have no "bald spot" but then I am also likely to have early hair loss (no bald spot cause I have no hair! :-)) and my muscular composition is common with elite power athletes. Yes!!! Well, not now though (gotta workout a little more :-)).

I'm going to do more work on this and post more (like on all of us) later, but I just wanted to get my updates out here fer now.

Stay tuned...

2/19/2018 -Can't Keep Up but Thistle do.

I Still Can't Keep Up on all the stuff that I want to do (or need to do)! Even now that I am mostly retired I am having a hard time getting everything done.

Lately I've been doing website updates (personal websites not affiliate sites) and so I haven't been keeping up on walking, practicing, recordings and everything else. Then when I focus on something else I get behind on other stuff. How did I ever do it when I worked and was younger? Oh yea, I was Younger!!! :-)

On a boring subject, at least I got my tax info in to my accountant.

So some of the website stuff that I just did was to pretty much finish up on the Cover Song Page on this site and post some of the music articles that I did here to my music site (blog area). I am going to try to keep the longer music related articles over on that site but I'll still post what I am working on here too.

On the Cover Song Page, I finished the audio file links (and even found another cover recording (On the Road Again)) and posted that one. I also included Drop-Down boxes for the Notes About the Songs. I don't like pages with too many mouse-over drop-downs boxes but I think it works OK on this page.

I was looking for a good color for the drop-down boxes and finally chose a color. They call it Thistle and as soon as I tried it I decided that Thistle Do!!!

2/17/2018 -Cover Mania! and The Cutting Room Floor

I've been working on my personal websites today trying to get things up-to-date and more organized. I know that I have posted a lot of music stuff here lately but that's because I just got the new recording stuff and am trying to do new recordings but I have also been updating my actual Song and Music website too and am trying to keep more of the music stuff on that site and the regular family and friends stuff on this site.

I have decided that I am going to keep my Cover Songs on this website though and use my music site - RobChapmanMusic.com for my Original Songs. The reason for this is that I try to keep this site out of the search results (Google, Bing, etc) and my music site is more public.

I learned (not that long ago actually) that it is technically not legal to record and post cover songs (even your own recordings of them) on the internet although most publishers do not really seem to care. Still I am trying to stay mostly legal (OK, so this site will be the rebel law breaker! Yea, I drive over the speed limit sometimes too :-)).

You may have noticed that the I have updated my songs to play directly in your web browser rather than requiring a plug-in to play them (this is done with the Audio Tag in html and is a much more current and standard format). I also found a conversion program to get all of my old song files out of that obsolete Real Audio format and into standardized MP3 files.

OK, so much for the Teckie explanations - I included a link like this one called Cover Song Recordings in my "Other Sites" page (listed at the top of each page). This page is actually on this website but that seemed like a good place for the link (with the other music stuff).

Then I also updated my Cutting Room Floor page on my song site so that all of my really old "B-List" rejected songs are easier to play too (Great! Now the bad songs are easier to play! :-)).

I am planning on keeping any more cover songs that I do out on the Cover Song page but I'll still leave the ones that are here already here (even though I have moved a copy to the other page too).

OK, that's enough for tonight! Later!

2/11/2018 -Age Recording - Where are my Chops!

OK, I just completed another cover song recording. I may still Remix this one or tweak it some so if you stop by another time it could be different. I just wanted to get it out on the website so I can check it out myself on different devices occasionally. I'll include a version number and date with the song so you can tell if it's changed.

This record is the song Age by Jim Croce. The name is kind of stupid because I don't think that the word "Age" is even in the song. It should be called Where I Started Again or something. You may not know the song anyway.

Anyway, I am still just recording cover songs right now because I need the practice to get my chops back. You non-musicians out there may not be familiar with Chops but musicians use it all the time. Well what are Chops anyway!!! I kinda know but I don't know where mine went. Where are my Chops! I need more chops! :-)

Anyway, I do the song slower than Jim (probably cause I'm old!) and since he wrote it and is the pro, he does it better (but at least I have more current recording equipment!). I'll include a link to the original song too - although I think it plays an ad first so you might have to endure that until you can skip it.

I tried to keep this recording pretty simple but I usually end up adding some additional "color" (like background tracks) since I don't think I sound that great with acoustic and vocal alone... It is still mostly just acoustic and vocals though.

So here is my recording of AGE - Version 1a from 2/11/2018:

And here is the original song from Jim Croce (in a YouTube video)

Age Song Video - Jim Croce

Later,

2/3/2018 - New Recording Studio and a New/Old Song Medley

I have been wanting a new "Recording Studio" for years now. Well, I finally got it. OK, it's not actually a "studio" cause it is just recording equipment that I use in my bedroom (which I guess is the studio). The cool thing is that it is really professional stuff and is small enough and affordable enough to get and keep in my bedroom.

The photo here shows most of the stuff. You may need to click on for the larger version to actually see it.

Some of this stuff gets complicated (like the mixing software) but here is what I got and I will try to just keep it simple (if possible):

A Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 Interface - This is just the red box in the photo that allows you to plug in mics and instruments which then get routed into my Laptop PC (via a USB cable) for the recordings.

Mixcraft Pro 8 Recording/Mixing Software - This is software used for mixing the sounds and is what is showing on the screens in the photo.

An Audio-Technica Cardioid Condenser Microphone - A pretty good recording mic

Sennheiser HD 380 pro Headphones - Decent headphones to monitor the sound mixing.

OK, I actually got a couple of other things but they were not exclusively for recordings. Like my PC upgrade was partially for this and I had an internal K&K Guitar Pickup installed in my guitar (which can be used for live or recordings).

It was a little tricky getting the interface setup right but the most complicated part was learning the Mixcraft Mixing Software. It reminded me of learning new technical products when I used to work but it looked like Adobe Premiere movie editing software too. It took me a couple of days to learn it good enough to use it.

OK, so I've recorded a few songs while learning how to use all of this stuff. For the latest one, I wanted to try some of the bass and drum loops that are included with the software so I found a song medley that I used to play years ago that mostly fit the bass and drum patterns.

I don't see me doing these kinds of recordings a lot but it was fun to do and I think it is entertaining too. It's only about 2 minutes so play the whole thing to get the full effect.

So here is my new recording of my old USA, South Medley.

Note: I just realized that my first version kinda sucked and I created a much better version 2

(I just got rid of the previous version)

I didn't have many ideas for a video and since these are cover songs instead of originals I decided just to post the MP3 here (the sound file link above).

1/25/2018 - Mountain Rock Video Posted.

The Facebook post from today

Here's another video version of one of my old original song recordings. I wrote this song in 1982 and the photos are from 2007 and 2009 so I think it qualifies for Flashback Thursday. You'll need sound to hear the song, of course. The old recording is not that good of quality but I think that the video is pretty entertaining.

Then I included the YouTube link: Mountain Rock YouTube Video.

Beyond Facebook:

Well as you can see from the Facebook post (and the credits at the end of the video) I have been working on this thing for over 35 years! OK, well I did some other stuff too I guess.

Even though this the recording is not that good (it was one of the first ones that I recorded on my compressed sound 4 track recorder), The song is an upbeat and fun kind of boogie rockabilly type song. So I figured that it would be entertaining.

I knew that I had a lot of good mountain photos from our vacations in Wyoming and Colorado so I went through the photos and found some good ones for the video. The photos are mostly from our old 5mp Kodak digital cameras so they are not as good of quality as my current camera but the scenery more than makes up for that! So I also got some more mileage out of those photos by using them in the video.

I took most of the photos in the video but Dara and Corinne got those excellent moose photos one early morning in Colorado. Of course, I would not have been up that early. :-) The photos are classic though!

This was one of the first songs that I ever wrote and I wrote it on my first drive through the Rocky Mountains on my way to see Ron, my old college roommate, in Oregon. I took a ton of photos on that trip too but there were on a film camera and not nearly as good as the digital ones anyway.

My original idea for the video was to play a slide show of the photos on my big screen TV with me in front of the TV fake-playing the keyboard. I was telling Corinne about my idea and she asked why I wouldn't just use a Green Screen effect for the video. Well I never did that before but looked it up on the internet and also found that my video software, Adobe Premiere Elements 12, had the capability to do this. How cool is that!

The Green Screen allows you to create a video and make the background transparent so it can be layered on to another video. This is how I got myself fake-playing the piano in the video with the mountain scenes behind me.

My first attempt was to use a green sleeping bag behind me and that did not work but then Corinne gave me a green screen fabric that worked great! It took some time to try to get it right but with the right lighting I finally got it pretty good. In the end I was a little disappointed that the piano video was a little chopped off on the sides but since I was way over budget on the production :-) I just went with the best version that I had.

I just recorded the video on my iPhone. Here is a photo of my Green Screen Studio (my bedroom with the light shades off and curtains taken down for as much light as possible). Click on the photo for the larger version.

I actually did a couple of versions of this video. In the first version I wore a wig under the Cubs hat. It was pretty funny and I wanted to use it but I did not get the fake-piano-playing nearly as good so I went with the no-wig version.

Here's the Wigged-out Version of Mountain Rock. I never completed it but you can get the idea. Hey, all the "other" Rock Stars have wigs and implants and stuff so why can't I? This version is short, like one verse, but you have to watch the suprise ending!

Well I hope people at least find the videos entertaining. :-)

1/21/2018 - Minor Website Makeover and Archiving

Since I am doing more frequent updates to this site now, I made a few changes to try to make things easier to find and easier to get to. I also archived another batch of posts - From 8/12/2016 to 6/24/2017 to help speed up load time for this page.

The archived posts can still be found in the Text & Photos Archives link here and at the top of this page, as usual (I keep everything!).

As for the Minor Makeover, here's a summary of the changes that I made:

I created a new link button at the top of the page called My Other Sites and created this new page. I also "demoted" the link to my "Song Site" and moved it to the My Other Sites page (since it still has all the old original content even though I updated the format to be more current).

I also moved the links to my other sites, that were at the bottom of this page (affiliate sites, etc.), to the new Other Sites page.

I also added my new Music and Songs YouTube Channel link to the Videos and YouTube link page at the top of the page (which was previously just called "Videos") and to the Other Sites page.

I realized that there are a lot of "My"s in the link buttons at the top of the page (My Bike sites, My Facebook, My Other sites...) and it reminds me of the old John Lennon song with "I-me-me-mine" and also poor marketing techniques but after all this page is mostly about Me and My family and friends so I guess that's just the way it is on this site...

I did give some thought a few times to converting this site to a Blog Format like Wordpress, since it is basically a blog and something like the Wordpress software would handle a lot of this archiving maintenance and make some other things nicer. But there is a lot of stuff on this site (going back to 1999) and I've kind of gotten used to the current format. So for now, I'm just keeping it as is...

Anyway, I hope that these little changes help make things easier to get to and faster.

1/17/2018 - Fantasy Land Music Video

The Facebook post from today:

I have been wanting to post some of my old original songs as YouTube videos for a while now and just completed the second one. This is a song from about 15 years ago. The recording sound is not that great but I still kind of like the song. You need to have sound to get what the song is like. See www.RobandDara.com for more as usual...

And I included the YouTube Link to the Fantasy Land Video

Beyond Facebook:

Well I hope this one goes over better than the last old-original-song conversion to YouTube Video that I did (I think I got 4 likes on that one). Anyway, even though the recording is really old and not that great I still like some of these songs.

For this one, I decided to include Dale and my photos that I over-saturated with color one time for an experiment. Since the song is about Fantasy Land, I thought that was OK.

I also decided to create another YouTube Channel for my music videos. The first few videos that I posted to youtube I just included in my personal/family channel but since I am hoping to post more music soon - Old and NEW recordings - I decided to create a new channel just for the music videos. This is the first video on my new music video channel.

Some of you might remember that Casey played Clarinet for a short time. Well I actually included him playing a short clarinet riff in this recording. OK, it's really short and not real loud but you can hear it if you know where it is and it really adds to the song too!

I recorded all the tracks for this song (except the clarinet of course) on guitar and synth. I used a drum machine on most of my older recordings and for this one I actually composed the drum track from scratch myself. I think that worked well for this particular song.

OK, it's getting late. I may tweak this update tomorrow but that's it fer now.

1/12/2018 - My Siesta Key Vacation!

The Facebook post from today:

I just got back from a great vacation in Siesta Key, Florida. See the photos and video in the usual (permanent) place: www.RobandDara.com

Beyond Facebook: Yep, Daryoosh and Karen invited me down to the condo that they have been renting each winter in Siesta Key, Florida and I accepted their invitation this year.

The photo on the right is a composite, of course, since I did not have one of the 3 of us together.

I had a great time (just check out the photos and video below to see)! We walked for miles on Siesta Key Beach, which is a really nice beach with white, soft, flour like sand and the weather was sunny and warm every day (highs in the 70s mostly). We also had some great meals often with live entertainment and cruised the main drag in Siesta Key where they also have live music everywhere (I think it's like a tourist place or something! :-)).

We saw the Siesta Key Drum Circle, which is a crazy public event where a bunch of hippie types get together with different kinds of drums and improvise while Grateful-Dead-Like dancers twirl and dance. It was dark when we got there and the dancers and crazies all had colored lights and gadgets and put on a pretty good show. I never experienced anything like that before. You gotta see the video to partially get the idea.

There is also free live music at places all along the main drag and in the restaurants. It's mostly solo musicians and small acts and they all sounded great. They had good equipment and provided good background music without being loud and overbearing. I included a short clip of a musician called Marcel in the video also.

I also got Great Airfare to Tampa and back (less than $200 round trip) and Karen picked me up and dropped me off at the airport. Then, even though I really tried hard, Daryoosh kept getting the checks at the restaurants! He has the opposite of alligator arms, he has octopus arms! I finally got to treat them to our last lunch there in the village. I also downloaded some Comcast movies and TV shows to my phone which I watched on my phone in the airport and on the plane.

OK, I guess that is enough yakin about my little winter vacation, let's get to the Photos and Video!

Here are the Photos from My Siesta Key Vacation

Here is the YouTube Video that I compiled from my phone videos

Thank You again Daryoosh and Karen!!!

12/30/2017 - In Memory Of...

OK, I am actually posting this on 6/10/2021 because I just posted a memorial (also late) for Dexter and realized that Kitty did not have one (and I can't have that)!!! So I put this post where it should be on the actual day that she died.

Kitty was my Favorite Dog (of our gen2 dogs)! She was affectionate and really smart too. I just created this new 3 pic photo from some of my favorite photos of Kitty.

You might recognize the one with her in the snow since I use that for a calendar photo for DEcember too. Kitty just loved the snow and cold! Seriously, she would lay around outside in a snow storm of 20 below zero weather! I might be going out on a limb here but I think that she might be descended from sled dogs!

Kitty Chapman 2/14/2004 - 12/30/2017

The Facebook post from today:

12/23/2017 - Dad's Synthesizer Composition

The Facebook post from today:

Many of you may not have known what an accomplished Synthesizer player my dad was. Here is an original composition he played in 1989 - I called it Jingle Bells in Outer Space (in the Christmas spirit) :-)

Jingle Bells in Outer Space by Henry Chapman

Beyond Facebook: OK, I was putting together the index for all of our camcorder tapes and ran across this video from 1989. My dad was at our house and I got him to try out the synthesizer and I camcorded it. Just another day our lives (at that time) but I though it was very entertaining.

So I just chopped out a few short sections of the video and made the little 30 second video clip. He had a couple of expressions that were pretty funny. Then I just called it "Jingle Bells in Outer Space" so it would look like a Christmas post (cheap marketing ploy! Well it does have a lot of bell sounds :-))

12/15/2017 - Walk, Run mile total

Well, now that biking season is over and I am doing walks for my aerobic exercise, I thought that I would add my Walk, Run mile total to the top of this page. That is probably mostly for myself. I like having it handy on the site and it kind of motivates me to do more. Since I do this in the winter months it is always a 2 year calendar season. Also, I am only walking now and that is what I do the most by far, but I call it Walk, Run Miles because occasionally I do a little jogging too.

Hmmm... I wonder what a good total miles goal might be. I don't think that I've tracked total miles walked (run) in a season before. Maybe 200? The walk, run season ends when the weather gets nice again (for biking) so that is an unknown factor.

12/04/2017 - Last Bike Ride?

Well I added a few more bike miles to my 2017 bike mileage this weekend. I didn't think that would happen in December! Actually, I have pretty much moved from biking to walking now but I wanted to check the mileage stats on my various devices so I took a short "Stats Ride" on my bike to check the route since it was in the 50s this weekend.

Most recently I have used the Nike Running app on my phone to check my mileage and stats when I walk but since KC and Corinne gave me my Apple Watch last year I find it more convenient to use that since I can check it more easily while I'm walking.

The Nike app is pretty accurate since it uses the iPhone GPS. My apple watch, however, is series 1 so it does not have built in GPS and uses an accelerometer. I don't think that this is as accurate as GPS but it is amazing how close the stats are. I looked this up on the internet and these things are kind of amazing.

The other thing that I like about the apple watch app (vs the Nike app with GPS) is that it also includes my average HR which it gets from the watch. I also looked this up and the watch uses LED lights and light sensitive photodiodes to measure heart rate. I have a good idea about what my heart rate is during various levels of activity from my chest strap that I have for my bike computer (mostly) and the watch averages seem pretty accurate (which is amazing too).

So now that I have all of these devices and apps and have tried to verify their accuracy, I just need to decide which ones I like the best and what level of variations I am able to tolerate...

Yes, I get a little obsessed about stats but did not go too overboard with this stuff this time :-)

11/30/2017 - ZBook is Up and Running!

Yep, I got my new HP ZBook Laptop early and I am doing THIS UPDATE on it. It was a nice Cyber-Monday gift, I guess. Well, setting up a new PC with all of the software and files from an older PC is always a big pain. Well, I've paid my dues and gone through the pain and now I am doing this update on my ZBook!

Before I get into the more teckie stuff, I'll just say that this PC is really fast!!! and Windows 10 seems like a pretty good OS (for a change). The photo that I included here is my Zbook as I normally use it. The actual laptop is the small display on the lower right and the larger display is my desktop photo on my wide screen TV through the HDMI port (actually I usually turn the PC so I only look at the TV screen).

In the photo (easier to see if you enlarge it), the stack of stuff under the TV screen is a bunch of software disks that I used for the migration and there is a small blue box in front of the laptop (by the window (real window :-)) that is a new 2TB external drive that I just got and used for the transfers.

There is one kind of funny thing that I overlooked. A lot of the new Laptops do not come with optical (DVD/CD) drives anymore. Well I just figured that I would get an external one at some point when I wanted to make a video DVD or an audio CD or something. I kind of forgot that you also need the optical drives if the software that you need to load is on DVDs! - Ooops! So I went to Best Buy and got one for $25 and happily loaded my software.

OK now for the slightly more teckie side of things (you regular people that might want to bail out now). So I loaded the following stuff:

- Moved 118GB, 108,169 files in 5,504 folders (6 Main Folders with 66GB in photos. Good thing that I moved my Videos to an external disk before I started!)
- 22 software installations
- 5 email account setups - 4 manual
- 5 Dreamweaver website setups
- Transferred my Chrome and IE FAVs to the new browsers

I found a 2010 version of the Office products that I was able to use (good enough for now) and all my other products had an extra license (or did not need licenses) so I did not have to go out and buy any new software! Yay!! (not yet, anyway).

BTW: Miscrsofts latest and greatest browser is called Edge. I guess they are phasing out IE (great! it sucked anyway!). So far the Edge broswer seems fast and much nicer than IE.

One of my biggest problems was just setting up the stupid Outlook email accounts. This should be easy, and would be, except if you just use the automated setup it uses the IMAP format which keeps your emails on the email server and you don't have a lot of control over how long they will allow you to keep them there. I changed most of my accounts to POP3 so I had to key in all of the parameters and it just got a little tricky. Then transferring all of my old emails was a little tricky too and took some time. (I guess I like my history and archives!).

OK, there were a few other minor teckie issues but I am pretty good now. Now, I can actually start to enjoy the thing. I already love the speed! Some things are still a little slow, like when you get on a slow website or sometimes even just getting my email from the Comcast server but most other things are just great!

I think I'll move my December logo to the site now too (a few hours early...)

BTW: The "December" photo, at the top of the page, is our dog Kitty a few years ago (when she was healthy) and she LOVED the snow and the cold! Seriously, she would lay down outside when it was below zero for a long time and loved it. And the snow was not problem either (as you can see in the photo). I am guessing (just going out on a limb here) that she might be part sled dog!

11/25/2017 - Harper Walk Post, Thanksgiving in Wisco

The Facebook Post from Today:

Beautiful day! here I am waving to all of you from my walk at Harper

Beyond Facebook:

Yes it was a totally beautiful day today here in Palatine. I think it was in the 60s. I took a couple of photos with my phone when I was out for a walk on the path that goes around the north and east sides of Harper college and I really like the one that I posted here (and on FB).

I like avoiding the Black Friday crowds as much as possible on BF and it was great to to take my little 4 mile walk today. I was putzing around with the walking apps on my phone and apple watch and decided to take a couple of photos just to show where I was.

Well my shadow kept getting in the way in my photos so I decided to just use it intentionally as part of the picture. My Shadow Selfie turned out to be the best part of the photo! I texted my photo to a few people then, since I liked it a lot, I posted it on FB too, I actually did this from my phone on my walk (which was a first).

Steely 2 against Nature This also reminded me of the 2 Against Nature Steely Dan album cover (shown here) except there is just 1 (for nature) in my photo since Walter Becker died this year :-( . I wasn't specifically trying to copy the album cover but I think they look pretty similar. What do ya think?

And the other big news, of course, was our Thanksgiving in Wisco! We had a great time and normally this would have been the "headline story" here but this year I decided to take a break from being the paparazzi guy and didn't take any photos. Of course, now I wish I had at least a few but it was so nice just to visit and talk to people without always trying to find and take the next great photo.

We did our usual multiple marathon drives to Wisco and back for Thanksgiving which was at Andi and Brads place this year. This year was just Dara, Corinne and me since Dara and Casey drew straws to see who would stay home to be the homecare provider for our dog Kitty (and Dara won). KC was so nice to offer to watch Kitty but we really missed him.

11/15/2017 - New Laptop On Order!

Yep I finally did it. I just bought a new HP ZBook Laptop. I bought the Dell Laptop that I am currently using off-the-shelf at Best Buy on 2012 as a backup PC for my old desktop system. Well my desktop system died (processor fried) a few years back and I have been using my backup PC since then.

Well my current laptop is painfully slow and has a real problem with anything that takes any kind of processing power (like video editing, photo editing, etc.). Plus I am planning on getting some audio recording software which also takes some more resources... So anyway, I decided to get something that could handle the kind of stuff that I normally do on a PC and just ordered it!

Here's the overall summary of what I got:

HP ZBook Studio G4 Workstation

Intel® Core™ i7 7700HQ processor (2.80 GHz, up to 3.80 GHZ...)
1 TB Z Turbo Drive G2 MLC SSD
16 GB (1x16 GB ) DDR4 2400 (RAM)
NVIDIA® Quadro® M1200 4 GB dedicated GDDR5
15.6" diagonal B-LED FHD UWVA Anti-Glare for HD
Windows 10 Pro 64
3 year Warranty

This is a customized ZBook that I configured (on the HP site) from the base configuration. Basically I customized the first 4 items listed above (Processor, Video Card, Disk and Memory) plus a few smaller things. The 1TB SSD Drive was, by far, the most expensive upgrade.

Since this is a customized version I will not get it until the beginning of December.

Then I need to load my software and see how many software licenses still work and therefore what else I need to buy! $$$$ Sheesh!!!

For more details (on this site, with less hype) see: My New HP ZBook Laptop Teckie Details

11/08/2017 - 2nd and Final Bike Miles Goal, Bike Trail Stuff.

The Facebook Update from Today:

I made my 2nd and final bike miles goal for this year (1,500 miles). Man, those last miles were cold! I had to get new tires a few weeks ago so that made it easier since I am now fully "re-tired"!

Beyond Facebook:

It was actually kinda hard to make that goal. I had other things going on, it takes quite a bit of time and those last 100 or so miles were really cold! I could have just quit riding when it got too old but I got a little obsessed with trying to make my goal but I'm relieved that that is over now.

I may ride if there is another really nice day or I am really in the mood but I think I'll move on to my walking (sometimes jogging) phase that I usually do in the winter.

I also completed 3 bike trail articles recently with short videos for 2 of them and was planning on doing a bike blog (and FB bike post) for those next. If you want to get the jump on that here are the 3 bike trail articles:

Mammoth Cave Trail - Kentucky
Wauponsee Glacial Trail - Check out the video link at the bottom of the pages
Hennepin Canal Trail - Check out the video link at the bottom of the pages

I think my new style of YouTube videos (with the canned music background) are pretty good.

Now I really need to move on to my fitness equipment updates on my websites but I am also looking at getting a new PC and recording equipment. How do people have enough time to work?!?!?

OK, more later, I gotta go it's getting late...

10/27/2017 - The Southern Tour Update!

OK, sorry for the delay but I finally got the photos that I took last week from my Southern Tour to Tennessee, to see Fred, and North Carolina, to see Jeff and Pam downloaded (and uploaded). I had a great time and, of course, it was great to see everyone again.

I didn't really take all that many photos since I was mostly just enjoying visiting and the stuff that we were doing. After I got back I was kicking myself for not taking more photos. Oh well, I'll just have to get more next time...

The captions under the photos will pretty much explain what we were up to but we also did a lot of other stuff that I didn't have photos for so there's more of a trip summary (below) after the photos.

Here's the Southern Tour Photos

The Trip Summary:

I stopped by Fred's house in Tennessee first. I didn't get to see Cyndi this trip since she was in Texas visiting her relatives :-(. Fred and I got a chance to catch up on a lot of stuff, had some great meals and hiked in the Cumberland Mountains at near the Cumberland Gap. The hike was really nice and a little bit of a workout for me although Fred was hardly breathing hard on the even tough parts (he's in great shape).

We hiked to the place where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia meet. It's like a "3 corners" (like the "4 corners" out west but harder to get to). We also did a Dueling Guitars session later that night that was really great. Fred and I alternated playing songs that we knew (and occasionally jammed when practical). Fred has gotten to be really good at finger picking.

My next stop was to see Jeff and Pam in North Carolina. The drive through the mountains was great and I had perfect weather the whole trip. I stopped in Charlotte first to pick up a rental RV for my creature comforts since the accommodations at the Farrm are a little rugged for me.

I pulled into the Farrm, with the RV, after dark and that was a little bit of a challenge but I got all set up just fine. I met Hayley and Ethan who are staying with Jeff and Pam (and Tank the dog actually) and we had some pizza and caught up on stuff a little.

The next few days we hung out, visited, caught up on stuff and I checked out the latest things going on at the Farrm. Of course, we got the band together again! Well with the members that we had available this time anyway (Jeff, Pam and me). We were just jammin - and having fun - of course but I think it really sounded good at times. Jeff has gotten much better at vocals and guitar and Jeff and Pam's harmony vocals were great! And, of course, the creativity behind Jeff's songs was off the charts.

We didn't do any recordings this trip but I did get a chance to check out Jeff's latest recording equipment.

OK, I am trying to keep this short (but I'm not real good at that)... We also had some great meals and had a nice fire on my last night there under a really nice starry night sky.

On the way back I stopped at the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky to ride the Mammoth Cave bike and hike trail. That was a very nice trail but a difficult and eventful ride. I'll write about and post the photos for that on my bike site at some point though.

OK, I'm gonna leave it at that since I meant to do a quick summary and not an entire diary here... That's it fer now!

10/6/2017 - The Song Site Makeover and New Link Button

As I mentioned a while back I was planning on doing and Entire Website Makeover on my song site. Well I have just completed that task. It took me about 2 days and most of the site has the same content as before it is just formatted much nicer and is mobile ready (so it will display on your phones and other gadgets much better).

Now that my music/song site is not so embarrassing anymore I have included a link button to it above (the My Song Site button above). I still think that a lot of the original songs on that site are pretty good although the recordings are not that great. I at least wanted the website to look better.

Since I like the nostalgia stuff, and keep everything, you can still get to the old legacy page in an archive part of the site. This can be sound at the bottom of the site map for that site or here > Legacy Website Pages (for comparison).

What I did was to use my Treadmill website template for the song site and added a new banner and favicon, etc. In addition to the formatting changes I made some minor changes to some of the pages and rewrote a lot of the home page. I also updated most of the main MP3 sound files to a little higher quality recordings.

The recordings will never be that great since my Y2K recording gear was not that good but at least they are probably as good as they can be now (and I'm not too worried about them being to big for dial-up users).

NEXT: Well, even though my YouTube video of Feel Like I Felt flopped completely on Facebook (3 likes?!?) I am still planning on converting some of the other main songs on the site to YouTube videos. It's an easy format for people to play, it's good to have a YouTube presence for the songs and I like having the lyrics displayed as the song plays (and the photos in the background are nice too). Now if I can just get that bouncing ball to bounce along on the lyrics I'll have it made!

Also if I can get some dancing cat or dog videos with my songs in the background I think it would be a much bigger Facebook success.

10/3/2017 - To be my Brotha's Brother

I became aware of an event that happened recently and I wanted to explain how it made me feel. I am not going to describe the event itself for various reasons including confidentiality and the fact that it is long and complicated.

Here's the part of the story that I will tell:

There once was this couple that showed great compassion and bravery in the process of doing a favor for their family and to be helpful and loyal to old friends. This favor involved some risk and when it took a turn for the worse, this couple showed great bravery, compassion, self control and good judgment.

Well that's my story (and I'm stickin to it). I only want to add that I am Proud to be my Brotha's Brother.

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9/30/2017 - Hennepin Canal Ride, Mileage goal, Feel the Video

Dale and I rode 31 miles, from Rock Falls, Il heading south on the Hennepin Canal Trail on Tuesday for Dales Birthday Ride (aka BDRide®). It took us about 2 hours to get to Rock Falls so this one takes a little bit of a drive to get to.

It was a really nice day and we had a good ride but the trail itself is really pretty rugged and difficult to ride on. It is pretty much all the same so the photo that I have included here applies to how most of the trail looked.

Actually, this is the kind of stuff that I usually post on my bike blog or my about-bicycles Facebook area so I'll leave it at that and post more there when I get a chance.

Aside from our latest ride and doing a bunch of stuff on my PC I have mostly been trying to make my new Bike Miles Goal of 1,500 miles for this year. I wanted to have at least 1,250 by October 1st but I am still a little short and my legs are really sore! :-( Waaah!

Oh yea, one of the PC things I worked on was to put together a video of one of my old songs. I am planning on doing a complete make-over of my song site (so it is not so old and embarrassing) and I also considered adding some of my old original songs to YouTube. Well I started with a video of my song Feel Like I Felt.

I used my original 4-track recording. It's a little better quality than the one on my song site (but it's still an old 4 track). Then I added the lyrics to the video - most as scrolling text but some just faded in and out - then I added original photos. So the video only uses my material so it is completely legal. The photos are mostly from my bike trail photos since that is where I have the most photos from my DSLR camera.

So here's the latest draft of Feel Like I Felt. This one is still a draft and I'm not sure if I will use it as the "official" video of the song.

Original Song Video - Feel Like I Felt (v2) - Draft

Man, videos take a lot of time! At least I have the time now...

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9/18/2017 - Lake Geneva Anniversary!

Dara and I had our 28th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We decided to go to Lake Geneva this year. It was a beautiful day and we had a really nice time. Most of the other times that we've gone to LakeG we walked around parts of the lake on the path that goes around the whole lake but this year we hung out by the beach and then took a tour boat ride (yes, we are goofy Illinois tourists I guess :-)).

I got my camera back from Corinne (they are back from Greece, of course). It worked fine and all but it was a little Greecey when I got it back! Anyway, there were a ton of seagulls at the beach and I wanted some nice flying seagull pics so I took a ton of those (I'm only including a few in with the photos below).

Then instead of walking the path like we usually did, we sprung for this boat ride tour. It was actually really interesting. They talked about all the rich-ass people that owned these summer homes on the lake and threw in a bunch of other interesting info too. So I got some big Lake Geneva House pics too.

So here are the photos (just birds and houses mostly but you can get a feel for what the day was like):

Our Lake Geneva Anniversary Trip

9/9/2017 - Swimming in Grease!

OK, not really Grease but Greece. (Like the photo here... OK, a feeble attempt at humor...) Greece

Anyway, I just thought that I would mention that Corinne and her boyfriend Will are in Greece right now!

They were in Athens for a few days (you know, the cradle of western civilization and all...) and now they are on Mykonos island. Tomorrow they take a ferry to Santorini island for a few more days which is their last stop before heading back to Athens then Rome then home (no matter where you Rome, there's no place like home).

Anywho, Corinne and Will went Scuba diving in the Mediterranean today and she just sent me some photos that the scuba place took of them while diving. There was another woman that dove with them and sometimes it's hard to tell which one is Corinne. They all had masks on. :-)

Anyway, I selected a few of the photos that Corinne sent to me and here they are:

Corinne and Will Scuba Diving in the Mediterranean

I thought that this was really cool (since I just hang around Palatine).

9/8/2017 - 2017 Bike Miles Goal (1) Done Already

I just posted this on Facebook: "Well I made my yearly bike miles goal today (1000 miles)... but I feel like I was cheating since I had so much extra riding time with this retirement thing going on :-) So I am going to shoot for 1,500 now this year. I seriously don't know if I'll make that one but I think I'll try anyway" (with the photo).

I don't have much of a "beyond Facebook" update for this one. I had some technical difficulties taking the selfie with my bike odometer though. It's really hard to ge the display to show up and without glare. I actually had to lighten the odometer display a little with Photoshop and it still does not show up very well (oh well).

It might be hard to make 1,500 miles this year. I got other things that I am planning to get done and it always depends a little on the weather too. Well at least I made my original goal.

9/3/2017 - Wauponsee Glacial Trail

Just a quick update. Dale and I rode 30 miles on the Wauponsee Glacial Trail yesterday. It was a really nice trail and we had a great ride. We started in Manhattan (Illinois of course) which is just south of Joliet and rode south to the Kankakee River.

I haven't done the trail pages or blog for my bike site but the photo on the right is from the trail. I also made one of the other photos into a "September" logo - on the top of this page.

8/27/2017 - My Street View 3D spherical photo

In my Street View post from yesterday, I said that I would post my own Street View photo if it worked out. Well, I tried this yesterday and it certainly did work out.

I took a 3D spherical photo (actually many photos) using my phone and the Street View app and then I published it on Google Maps. I just thought that the concept of being able to take a 3D spherical photo is really cool.

So here's the link to the Street View photo that I took and posted on Google Maps:

My 3D Street View Photo of the Paul Douglas Trail on Google Maps (with my bike in it).

Move it around with your mouse or finger for the full 3D effect.

You can also get to this photo in Google Maps. If you go to the Paul Douglas Forest Preserve (Hoffman Estates) and zoom in to where the parking lot road is (the south side off of Central Road) and then grab the yellowish Peg Man (street view guy). When you hold him over the map you see the blue Street View areas and mine is just a blue dot where you get on the trail. It's just a dot and not a line because I just did the one photo.

Here's how it worked: You get into the Street View app on the phone and allow it to use your phone camera. Then when you are ready for the photo(s), there is a large orange dot in the image and a circle. You need to align the circle around the orange dot and it automatically takes a photo (you don't have to press the button to take the picture). Then the orange DOT moves over to set up the next photo and you do that again.

So you do the dot/circle game as you turn around in a circle getting the eye level view, then you repeat for the higher views then again for the lower views. I didn't count but I must have taken 30-35 photos for this one 3D image.

One interesting thing is when I took the photos for the ground level views my feet were in the picture. When it got converted to the 3D image, they were gone! (and the yellow trail line was not lined up).

The 3D image is just available through the App and on Google Maps, if you publish it, so it is not like you have a personal copy of this photo but then, you would need special software to view it anyway. So until this becomes available for private users I am OK with just doing it through the app and on Google maps.

If you want to do a Street View of an entire road or trail, you would need to take the photos as I described above, move 10 feet down the road or trail and do it again, and repeat for the entire distance. So this is not all that practical for an entire road or trail without the special equipment that the Google Street View people use but it can be cool for a few photos (or smaller areas).

So anyway, the reason that I have yaked so much about this is to let you all know that you can take 3D photos with your phone and the Street View app. There are limitations to viewing it, like you have to do it in Google Maps for anyone else to see it (and you need to blur out peoples faces and licences and stuff, etc. so you can't really use it for people pictures).

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8/26/2017 - Google Street View and Trail View

I just discovered that 2 of the trails that I have ridden now have Google Street View - or more accurately Google Trail View. I blogged about this HERE on my BIKE BLOG and did a quick Facebook post about it too.

My Bike Blog post has links to the Trail View trails and I described some of what I learned about Google Street View after I did a little research into it but of course there is more interesting stuff that I didn't include on the bike blog article.

Here's one of the key paragraphs from the bike blog (I don't want to retype it so I am just pasting it here):

"Just to be clear, the Google Street View option is not just a 360 degree photo and it is not a video. It is a series of photos that allows you to see all around the point where the photo(s) were taken – front, back, sides, and up and down. Then you can move forward, backwards, etc. (with the arrows) to the next spherical photo. How cool is that!"

Well I was really getting curious about how Google does this so I got some additional information from their Street View pages. For example THIS STREET VIEW PAGE shows a map of all the places in the world where Google has done street views. Then towards the bottom of the page it shows Google's Street View "Fleet".

This is pretty cool because it shows the Google Street View Car with the cameras on top that photographs most of the regular streets but it also shows the Street View Trike that it uses for the trail photos, the Treckker backpack that they use for hiking trail "street views" and even a Snowmobile and Trolley (for tight indoor shots).

I thought that it was interesting that they have special cameras and equipment that take a series of photos all at once for any given Street View location. Then the photos are merged together and the software lets you look around in any direction as if you were in the location where the photos were taken. WOW!

Then I noticed that individuals can also contribute to Street View but you either need special cameras like they show on THIS STREET VIEW PAGE or you can just use your phone and the Street View App by spinning around in circles taking multiple photos at different levels - I'm getting dizzy already!!!.

OK, well maybe you don't have to actually "spin" but you do have to turn all directions and take multiple photos. I got the Street View app and I am going to try to take the photos and publish it to Google the next time I am on a trail or something and have time to fool around with it. If it works out, I will, of course, mention it in another post here.

OK, well that is all I want to know about Street View for now (and maybe more than you may have ever wanted to know! :-)). I gotta git!

Note: The email option always waits for a message but for the "Like" option you don't need to write anything. Just click on send.

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8/13/2017 - Thorn Creek Trail Bike Site Pages

Just a quick follow-up to the post that I wrote yesterday. Today I completed the Ride Report (as I call it) and photo pages for the Thorn Creek Trail. This is the same trail that I did the video for in the article below from yesterday.

So I finally got some of the updates that I wanted to get done on my bike site. Pretty soon I should be able to get to the Profit page updates (Fitness equipment, of course).

So anyway, here's a link to the new Thorn Creek Trail pages that I just posted on my bike site.

8/12/2017 - Thorn Creek Trail Video ~ Slinky Soundtrack

I've been trying to catch up on my website stuff like at least updating the bike trails that we rode last year and that I photographed and video recorded (in some cases) but it is so hard to do stuff that resembles work when every day is a Saturday!

So today I started working on the Thorn Creek Trail that we rode last October. I selected a batch of pictures and started working on the pages for my bike site but since I also recorded some videos on my phone while I was riding, I decided to put together the video too.

I got totally obsessed with the video and spent hours on it ~ and it is a minute and a half video! I do like having well produced videos for my bike site even if the source is just a couple of phone video clips. Some of the stuff that I spent time on I can use in future videos too.

Anyway, one of the coolest things I thought was the slinky, canned soundtrack that I picked for the background music. Adobe calls the sound track "Slow Dirty Funk" so I figured how could I go wrong with that. :-)

So anyway, here's the video that I just did (I also posted this on FB). You have to play it with the sound for the full effect.

Thorn Creek Trail Video on YouTube

I could do this one on YouTube since the canned backgrounds are legal (unlike my cover song videos below). And here's my new likes and comments stuff...

Note: The email option always waits for a message but for the "Like" option you don't need to write anything. Just click on send.

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7/31/2017 - Likes and Comments - In a Different Way

As most of you probably already know, this website has been around for 18 years now and is just a simple HTML webpage format. I have never setup this site to use any actual blogging software (like Wordpress like my Bike Blog).

There are things that I like about this current format but it does not give me some of the nicer tools that you get with blogging software , like Wordpress. For example with Wordpress you can setup and allow comments. I may, at some point convert this part of robanddara.com to use Wordpress but I don't want to go through all the work of the conversion right now.

I did however consider including an easy way for visitors to this site to do Facebook-ish Likes and Comments. OK, well this site aint Facebook, of course :-) :-) so I can't easly do the same kinds of likes and comments but I thought that I would try including a fairly easy way to do likes and comments and see how it works and if anyone would even use it.

What I am doiing here is just setting up a little easier way to send Email Likes and Comments here. You could always just send emails with the link at the top of this page but I wanted to add the option under each post or article here and fill in the subject line with the article date and info and either "Like" or "Comment".

So with just a few clicks (a few more than FB) you can send a Like or Comment. Of course, it will just go to me and you won't see it posted on this page like that "other" website but at least you can easily give feedback and I can get it. I could also post the number of likes later if anyone cared.

I am going to add my new idea at the bottom of this post (and the previous one). So go ahead and give it a try (if your brave enough)! And let me know what you think (silence will also let me know something).

Note: The email option always waits for a message but for the "Like" option you don't need to write anything. Just click on send.

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7/30/2017 - Selfie Phone Music Videos

I have been attempting to play guitar again! I need more practice but... I took some Selfie Phone Videos of me playing some cover songs.

So I took my phone and rubber banded it to a tripod to get the videos. OK, it's not the best setup but I was actually curious what I looked like and sounded like these days after just a little practice over the last 16 years. Yea, it was a little scary but it was actually a good learning experience. I saw stuff that I do that looks stupid and things that I played or sang that sucked too. OK so there is a lot of room for improvement...

Well I would much rather have a multi-track recorder and add all the tracks (like on my old recordings) but this was OK to see how the live performances looked and sounded after all these years. I did most of these songs with one take so they include mistakes and everything. Fortunately, I only selected a few to post here and edited most of then to just include one verse.

I actually spent way more time editing and rendering the videos than I did on the recordings of the songs... Which is not the best way to do things, but oh well...

I would actually really rather post videos to YouTube rather than posting them here but I learned a little more about copyrights before posting these videos. I knew that you could not use other people songs in your videos but I used to think that it was OK to use your own performances of other peoples songs in videos.

Well, I was wrong, it turns out that is NOT OK. So although some artists and publishers do not really mind people covering their songs others do and you can get busted for it so I am posting them here for a much lower profile (and to not get in trouble with YouTube). I hope I can post some of my originals to YouTube at some point.

I was thinking that it would be funny and I could boost my website traffic temporarily from Facebook if I did a Facebook post that said something like: I just posted some ILLEGAL VIDEOS on our family site (here) I'll skip that idea though I think...

OK, YAK, YAK, YAK, YAK, YAK, YAK, YAK!!! Enough of that.. here are the videos:

(since it's not YouTube, I did a PC/Flash version and an Apple version so most people should be able to see them).

A Few Cover Song Selfies - for PC in Flash Format

A Few Cover Song Selfies - for Apple devices MP4 format

Oh yea, one last thing on a related topic... I just did some minor updates to my old Music/Song website. I finally imported it into Dreamweaver (which it the website editing software that I use now) but I didn't add a template or make the website mobile or any of the good stuff like that (yet at least). At least I took out some of the bad links on the main page and cleaned things up just a little.

This website was started around 1998 and has a really old (corny) format. I was also trying to get songs published at the time and using an out-of-date 4 track recorder (and dial up speeds) for the sound files. Sheesh!

Well I discovered that a lot of the original songs still sound pretty good (aside from the recording quality). Some are really corny and funny thiough. The MP3 files seem to work the best and I just discovered that I can play them on my iPhone too. So it looks like you should be able to play these on PCs or Apple devces.

Anyway here's a link to My Old Original Songs and Music website: www.RobChapmanMusic.com Then Select the Song Samples liks to get to the audio recordings...

Also, it is really hard to find my old music site in Google and the other search engines since there is a really popular Rob Chapman musician from England. Damn! You won't find me in searchs with "Rob Chapman Songs" or most other obvious search strings but because of the domain name you can find me with "Rob Chapman Music".

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7/23/2017 - Racing, Camping Movies from the 50s and 60s on YouTube!

OK, I finally found some spare time :-) to convert the old Racing, Camping Video that I had ~ originally converted from 8mm movies ~ to a better YouTube friendly version.

I put together the original video quite a while ago but I only had it in a really small format and could not put it on YouTube because it had copyrighted songs from the 60s in the sound track. Today, I finally tracked down the original video project and video files, did some minor updates and added a new sound track with legal canned music from Adobe. I would have preferred the original songs but do not have the resources to try to get copyright approvals for all that.

So now you can play a Full Size Version of the Video on YouTube! Of course, the Original Source (the 8mm movies) were degraded and the video copy that I got was from my cousin Randy and he recorded it to a VHS camcorder (I think the movie was projected on to a wall!) then I recorded it to my 8mm camcorder (I think) then digitized it at some point. So, as you can imagine, the video quality is poor... BUT at least it is digital now and we can actually still see it... and it's on YouTube!

Of course, the quality is terrible compared to videos that you can just take on your phone today.. but it's the content that counts, in this case, and back then... Remember... Phones were just for talking and who ever heard of a phone that is not plugged into the wall anyway?!?!

Even though I stripped down the original video to the best-of stuff, the video is still pretty long. It is about 14 minutes. Fortunately, you can just fast-forward or skip the parts that get too boring. I have added quite a few captions so you should be able to tell who a lot of the people are, what was going on and approximately when it was.

OK, I think that's most of the story behind the video and the latest production of it... So here's the YouTube Link:

Racing Camping Movies from the 50s and 60s!

I'll add a little Facebook notice next so it will get a little exposure...

7/16/2017 - Is there Something Wrong With Me???,Video Editing, Bluegrass Video, Kankakee River Trail

I have been wanting to do more frequent updates here now that I am not working full time but somehow I am still having a hard time doing that!

I have been retired for a month and a half now and I still have a ton of chores and work that I have not gotten to. It seems like all I want to do is the fun stuff!!! Is there Something Wrong With Me???

OK, so mostly I've been ridin my bike, since the weather has been so good. We also had a lot of fun with the 4th of July stuff and we have been eating out more than we used to. I have managed to do some website updates but not really that much yet.

I had some videos to update and was having problems with my Adobe Premier Elements (APE) software so I thought I would check out Windows Movie Maker (WMM). I found that WMM is actually a lot easier to use for just basic Video Editing. I figured out the issue with APE which is better for the more advanced stuff.

Anyway, part of the reason that I mentioned that is because I just uploaded a phone video of a Bluegrass Festival that I took on my phone on a recent bike ride. It's just a "Yee Haa" foot stompin show but one of the things that was cool is that we went to the Old Plank Road Trail for a ride and I was surprised to catch a cool show right on the trail!

Here's my Bluegrass Festival Video on YouTube that I took on our bike ride.

And finally, I did get one website work task accomplished (it you want to call that work). I finally posted my photos and ride report for the Kankakee River Trail which we rode last year. This was a pretty nice trail and we got some decent photos. So...

Here's the Kankakee River Trail Article and Photos

Oh yea, I also cleaned up some garbage on this page (at the bottom) and other minor updates...

Also, while I was doing video stuff, I checked out my YouTube Bike Channel and just noticed that I have thousands views on my old bike trail videos and 16 subscribers to the channel! I had no idea.

These videos have sound tracks of my original songs with the vocals removed (I just wanted instrumentals). This was a lot of work to do but now I discovered that I have a bunch of canned background soundtracks available with APE which I will be using the next time (to keep production time and costs down :-)).

Later...